This disclosure relates generally to the selection of content for presentation, and more specifically to content containing links to external pages.
Users may post content to online systems to be shared between other users of the online system. It is valuable for an online system to promote posts with which a viewing user is likely to interact through actions such as likes, sharing, commenting, and others. This likelihood to interact is determined according to multiple factors. For example, the online system might account for factors such as the connection between a viewing user and a posting user, the interests of the viewing user, the timestamp of the post, and others.
When opportunities to present content arise, the online system selects posts for presentation at least in part according to the probability of user interaction with the posts. This method may use a value score determined from the probability of an interaction occurring and a value associated with the interaction. Moreover, different user interactions may be considered. For example, commenting on a post may be associated with a higher value than liking a post, while sharing a post may be associated with a higher value than commenting on a post.
In the case that a post contains a link to an external landing page, the quality of the external landing page may influence the viewing user's experience of the post. A poor quality external page may contain features such as a misleading title, slow page load, technical glitches, pages that are not mobile friendly, excessive advertisements, or others. These factors may detract from a viewing user's experience of the associated post, even if the post itself does not contain negative features.